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Sunday, 13 January 2013

Marjorie

Marjorie has always been thin. This is important to her. She likes to be in control and her weight is one of those everyday things that she had dominion over.

Being boyish and birdlike means she can look down on all the fat people. Sometimes she makes a sympathetic face while they moan about not being able to lose any weight. You have to play along with these fat fools, make them feel like you understand, even though you can’t. Why don’t they just eat less? So greedy. Not like her.

Eating in a restaurant is always a sadistic sort of fun for Marjorie. She always refuses a starter (“I’ll have no room for my main!”), indulges in a proper main course and then insists the restaurant prepare a fruit salad for her dessert (“any good restaurant should be able to rustle up a fruit salad”), then looks down her bony nose at her companion’s food. “Haven’t you done well!” she likes to exclaim, “eating all that!”

At home she always eats dessert, every night. A single square of chocolate, savoured to get absolutely every molecule of flavour out of it. She never wants any more than a single square.

Before bed each night she pats her flat stomach over her brushed-cotton nightie. If she feels her clothes are getting a bit tight she simply eats a little less for a few days. It’s easy. She simply can’t see why fatties let themselves get like that, all flabby and wobbly. They should be ashamed.

Your character studies are always so great, fully realised in such a short piece of prose. I would say you write 'rounded' portraits of real people - but you could clearly sharpen a knife on Marjorie's bony cheeks!

Well... I came in from work starving, gazed into the almost empty fridge and then sat down with the only thing I could find - a final lump of christmas pudding to keep me going til dinner. Guess I'll never be a Marjorie - but I feel a whole lot better about it now I've read this. Great, as ever.